When a low caste girl's body is found in the rural badlands of Northern India, a newly appointed police officer is pulled into the investigation alongside her corrupt colleagues.
Santosh (brilliantly played by Shahana Goswami) is an emotionally bruised young woman who takes up the option of ‘compassionate appointment’, a scheme in India that enables women to take up their deceased husband’s old jobs. When a girl’s body is found, her lazy, bribable fellow officers, under the command of bullying Inspector Sharma, seem to do anything but the right thing. This terrific slow-burn drama is the anti-Hollywood version of the straight-arrow cop navigating corruption on the force (think ‘LA Confidential’ and ‘Serpico’), but more unusually, it is a female rural Indian police officer at the core, meaning a far murkier and less predictable affair. The problems are far too deep-seated for one well-meaning, inexperienced young constable to solve, leading us into a maze of compromised ethics, police brutality, caste violence and misogyny. Quality filmmaking.
India 2024 Sandhya Suri 128m
